


What If?

by FangirlMess



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Angst, Gen, Non cannon - Freeform, can't say it's much better than the actual musical though, i'm sorry this is just pure sadness, there are so many references in this, there is no happy ending, this is just a headcannon i thought of one day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25759795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangirlMess/pseuds/FangirlMess
Summary: I'm just, the biggest musical fan, idk, blame my mother, she took me to see The Book of Mormon and it was all over after that. This idea came to me when my brain's most active, basically, while trying to sleep at 3 in the morning and I wrote it down and so here we are.The basic premise is just, what would happen if Marvin never got back together with Whizzer? This is like, the most depressing thing I've ever written so just, be prepared for that, may have cried a little writing this.
Relationships: Jason & Marvin (Falsettos), Jason & Whizzer Brown, Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	What If?

**Author's Note:**

> Also, idk if anyone reads these, but, I am still gonna post chapter 5 of my other story, I've just had terrible writers block for a while, I am committed to finishing it though. 
> 
> Kudos and comments always appreciated :)
> 
> \- FangirlMess

Marvin, holding a bouquet of flowers in one arm, began walking towards the cemetery, Jason slightly ahead of him.

“Come onnn Dad,” Jason whined, straining to walk faster. Marvin closed the gate and picked up his pace, trying to please his son. 

“Alright, alright, I’m walking faster.” he exclaimed, then sighed tiredly. Marvin didn’t want to be here today, but his son was adamant to know more about his family ever since his Bar Mitzvah which was, as it happens, a year ago on this day. 

Jason, still impatient, began walking farther ahead, seemingly not wanting to be around his sluggish dad anymore, so Marvin began getting lost in his own thoughts, swinging the bouquet slightly as he walked. 

It had been three years since he’d lost Whizzer, when he had called his bluff and left, suitcase in hand after Marvin had thrown a fit over a chess game. A chess game of all things, how could he have been so stupid?

Now the man that Marvin had grown to realize he loved was gone; never showing up in his life again, lost to the gay bars and one night stands that his ex-boyfriend surely had taken back up in a frenzy as soon as he left Marvin’s apartment. Every night he regretted it, wondered _what ifs_ and running different scenarios in his head over and over again. Sometimes he thought about trying to call him, reaching out, but he never got up the courage. 

“What the hell? Jason-!” Marvin exclaims, crashing straight into Jason, having been so lost in his thoughts, that he’d missed his son stopping at a grave. 

Jason was pale as a sheet, looking almost ill as he stared straight at the grave he’d stopped at. 

At first Marvin was confused, this wasn’t Jason’s grandmother’s grave, but then his eyes landed on what Jason was so shaken up by. 

The grave read: Whizzer Michael Brown: August 23rd, 1951 - December 6th 1981.

Marvin’s eyes bulged out as he turned somehow paler than Jason. "Marvin laughed breathlessly, murmuring "No, no, no…" No, it couldn’t be, no, no, not-not Whizzer. A painful sob rang from next to him, startling Marvin out of his whirlwind of thoughts. He looked over to see Jason who seemed to be holding his breath to not cry anymore, looking up at his father in question; wanting, _needing_ him to say this wasn't the grave of the man they knew and loved. 

_His math skills were albeit a little rusty after all these years, but even he could know easily that this person had died at only thirty, and he knew his Whizzer was five years younger than him...no, no, no, this is some-some cruel coincidence, had to be. But how common was the name Whizzer...let alone Whizzer Brown… No._ He stopped his thoughts, no, this must be a coincidence. 

Somewhere in Marvin’s brain, the only logical part of it at this point, knew, and knew he was in denial, that there were no other thirty year old men named Whizzer Brown in New York City, it just wasn’t possible.

Something about the second date too, it sounded so, so familiar. “December sixth, December sixth...” He muttered under his breath, trying hard to place it. 

“What Dad?” Marvin looked down at his son in surprise, he hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. 

Then it hit him, like a pile of bricks. That was the day of Jason’s Bar Mitzvah… While he was enjoying himself at his son’s Bar Mitzvah the man he had loved, and still did, had died, and he’d never know what killed him. Had he been alone? He couldn’t stomach that thought.

Great heaving sobs shook Jason’s shoulders once he realized his dad had made the connection too, and he wasn’t wrong. Marvin collapsed onto his knees into the shallow layer of snow on the ground, the shock of it all hitting at once. Jason kneeled next to him sobbing loudly into his shoulder as Marvin put his arm around him, and father and son were, for once, completely at an understanding. 

Marvin couldn’t believe he really had lost Whizzer forever. He’d never have his chance to apologize, never even get to see his pretty face again. Jason would never again see the man whom, Marvin knew in his heart, had always been better with him, when they had still been together. 

Heads bent low, and tears dripping down Jason’s cheeks into the brown, dying grass poking through the snow, Jason and him silently mourned the _what ifs_ , the missed chances, the life they could never even have a chance of, not anymore. 

The lilies they had brought with them lay forgotten on the ground near them.

After a moment Marvin pulled Jason into a tight hug in the snow, that Jason melted into for the first time in, well, Marvin didn’t know the last time his son had wanted to hug him, or even really, be near him at all. It would have been a nice moment if not for the crushing weight they were both shouldering of this sudden news. 

As Marvin slowly let go the shock wearing off a bit, and looked yet more closely at the grave, he noticed that there were no flowers, no trinkets, no sign anyone had visited his grave anytime recently, and looking now for their forgotten lilies, picked them up from the snow covered grass and lay them gently on the ground in front of it. 

Jason’s quieting sobs grew louder as he looked over to see what his father was doing. 

“Dad-” Jason’s voice cracked as he looked up at his dad, glassy eyed, his face looking just as pained as Marvin felt. 

“I know kid...let’s go home, okay?” Marvin’s voice sounded heartbroken, it wavering like his heart seemed to do in that moment. 

Father and son walked back out the way they’d come, through the gate, clutching onto each other like the other was a lifeline, completely the opposite as when they had walked into it. Jason’s quiet sniffles and louder sobs could be heard on their entire walk home. 

* * *

Marvin opened the door to his apartment, and walked straight for the couch. He sat down and put his head in his hands, letting out a pained, loud sob, just not being able to hold it in any longer. He heard Jason’s muffled footsteps retreating towards the two bedrooms. 

He stayed like that for what felt like all eternity, unable to even move his head. 

Jason’s finger impatiently tapped at Marvin’s arm, dragging him out of his state, if for a moment. He looked up at his son, eyes red and puffy and looking heartbroken, gaze silently asking Jason what was so urgent. Jason instead of answering the silent question, sat down next to his dad. 

“I found this in the back of your closet.” Jason stated, plainly. 

That grabbed Marvin’s attention. “You what! Why?” He nearly shouted, the tremor in his voice even more apparent. 

Jason shrank back and shrugged. “I was…” He looked guilty, trying to quickly think of an excuse.

“Why were you snooping around in my clos-” His voice caught in his throat as he finally looked at exactly what it was that Jason had found.

It was a small cardboard box with Whizzer scribbled in Marvin’s messy handwriting. 

Instantly forgetting his anger at his son, he took the box from him. The top part of it was covered in dust, though that made sense, it had been sitting in his closet for nearly 3 years, untouched. 

Opening it carefully, not even sure what was even in the box anymore, he and Jason both coughed, the dust going into the air. 

Jason hesitantly reached into the box, grabbing what looked to be a thick stack of old photographs. 

“What is all this, dad?” Jason asked, grabbing next a button down shirt similar to the one Whizzer had been wearing the day he left. 

‘Well,” he stopped to clear his throat. “Whizzer, well, he left in a hurry, such a hurry that a lot of his stuff stayed here. I had no number to reach him at so, well, I boxed it up, and I couldn’t bring myself to toss it.” His son seemed to be barely listening to his explanation though, having begun to flip through the pile of photographs. 

Jason sniffled rather loudly and Marvin looked at the photograph in his hand, assuming it to be the culprit, and an involuntary sob wracked his body. The photo was one he himself must have taken, Whizzer with an excited nine year old Jason balanced on his shoulders, both of them with wild smiles on their faces. It must have been from the few times Marvin brought Whizzer over to his home and introduced him as his friend. Jason and him had gotten along so well, and that photo was evidence of this. Marvin picked up some of the other pictures, most of them seemed to be of Jason, Marvin, or Whizzer or some combination of both. He guessed the photos he took for his job were at his studio still.

“Dad?” Jason looked so much unlike his normal self, guilt written all over his face.

“Jason?”

“I used to see Whizzer all the time last year, he-” Jason stopped when he saw the look of shock on his dad’s face. “-he came to my baseball games all the time, I invited him, I’m still not sure how you never saw him, but then one day he just, stopped coming, and I could never figure out why.” The silent answer to his unanswered hung thick in the air between them.

Marvin hugged his son close as he saw renewed tears leaking down Jason’s face. The revelation that Whizzer had been that close to him last year, and he’d never realized didn’t matter now. No, now, he needed to focus on being a good father for once in his life and comfort his distraught son.

 _Maybe in another universe I could have had him back..._ He thought as he gently rubbed Jason’s back. 


End file.
